Patient Doe
by SiriuslyPeeved
Summary: Potter!lock AU: Sherlock Holmes has run afoul of both New Scotland Yard and the Ministry of Magic. Healer John Watson is fascinated by the unconscious patient on his ward at St. Mungo's and by the intense security surrounding him. How dangerous could a Squib really be?
1. Ron Weasley: Still A Complete Prat

**Notes:** Originally posted on LiveJournal as part of Holmestice 2013 and cross-posted to AO3. **nox_candida**, I hope you enjoy your gift. Your prompts inspired me to try an alternate meeting in a fusion universe and I've fallen in love with this scenario.

I borrowed the description of John's wand from "Wandlore" by SkaraBrae on AO3. I think it fits healer John perfectly. Thank you for the inspiration!

I am so grateful to my wonderful beta from the Reviews Lounge, Too, **Aiko Isari**, who read the version posted on LJ earlier this month. I've expanded the story since the last time it was beta-read, so I take full responsibility for any remaining errors and missed Britpicks. (I am always open to CC and suggestions - I'm not in love with the title!)

Thank you also to the kind and generous members of LJ's Holmestice community for the reviews and support, as well as the prodding to continue the story. (I have Chapter 3 in the works, I promise!) Without further ado...

**December 2010**

Like a ginger Father Christmas, Ron Weasley laid a finger aside his freckled nose. "I'm telling you, Johnny, watch out for this one. Bollocks this up and it's a dead-end career in general practice for you."

"Shut up, Weasley." Layers of bandages swathed one side of the patient's face. The other was rayed with cuts from broken glass, swollen and reddened. _Not properly cleaned at that,_ clucked John.

He pushed sparkly red-berried garlands out of his way to make a note on the chart. St. Mungo's Volunteer Auxiliary always went a little overboard on the Christmas decorations.

"I'll be cleaning and re-bandaging these lacerations after my rounds," he said aloud for Ron's benefit. "And then I'll be ripping those idiots in the Trauma ward a new one for neglecting my patient." John ferociously scrubbed his hands clean at the sink. "So you really can't tell me anything else about this guy?" Ron shrugged in apology. "Fine then. Let's see what the chart says." John kept reading. "Name: John Doe... That's original. Six feet tall, seventy-two kilos. Skinny bloke. Hair, brown. Eyes... Blue?" John frowned at the question mark.

"Blood status: Squib. Ah, yes. Very dangerous." John smirked and raised both eyebrows at Ron. The Auror failed to rise to the bait.

What in hell was a Squib doing in Magical Injuries and Accidents in the first place? And for God's sake, why had Weasley found it necessary to handcuff him to the bed?

John pulled up the cuffs of his green work robes and slid two ungloved fingers around the patient's wrist to ensure it wasn't chafing. Satisfied, he moved to the other wrist and measured the pulse: slow but regular.

As John's hands moved up the patient's warm forearm, his fingers trailed fading green-and-yellow bruises. A ragged strata of scar tissue clung to the inside of the elbow: the marks of Muggle drug use.

John bent fractionally closer to examine the man's face. Deep purple shadows bloomed under his eyes. Broken blood vessels scattered across his cheeks like twigs fallen in a storm.

"Who is this poor bastard, anyway?"

Ron Weasley pulled a packet of Bite-Sized Chocolate Frogs out of his robe pocket and tore it noisily open with both hands. He waved a squirming frog toward John, who declined. "I'm serious, Watson. I'm under orders not to tell you who this bloke really is, but since you're Bill and Charlie's old mate and all- " Ron wiped his chocolaty fingers on his robe and stepped closer to whisper. "This is the younger brother of Mycroft Bloody Holmes."

"Jesus H. Christ!" John reached up to whack the Auror upside his scruffled red head. "Buggering fuck, Weasley. You could have told me that!"

Ron covered a shit-eating grin with the hand that wasn't holding the bag of Chocolate Frogs. Jesus, even as a grown man, Ron Weasley really was as big a prat as Bill and Charlie had always said.

John took a moment to recover. "I thought Mycroft Holmes was a story mums used to scare their kids into behaving."

Ron just grinned back and wadded up the candy wrapper, tossing it into the bin beside the bed.

If you believed the rumors, (and John didn't) the elder Holmes was the single human link between the Ministry and the Muggle government. Placed unobtrusively in minor positions in the magical and mundane Ministries, he ran both like his very own Punch and Judy shows. That's what John's conspiracy-minded mates liked to yammer on about when they were pissed - John would rather play darts or chat up pretty girls, but whatever.

"That's a crock, Weasley. The world's bad enough as it is without this extra layer of mysterious mumbo jumbo."

"Mycroft Holmes is real. I've met him."

"You never."

"This morning. Crime scene."

John burned to know more. The bed curtains swished back. A man with messy black hair and crooked glasses poked his head inside. "Hello, Healer. Sorry to barge in. I'm Auror Inspector Potter."

"Ta," John nodded, feeling like a fool.

"You ready to go, Ron? Wright's arrived to guard the suspect."

Ron grinned. "My modest colleague requires no introduction." Harry rolled his eyes. "John, this is my brother-in-law Harry. Harry, this is Bill and Charlie's mate John Watson: Gryffindor Chaser, '86 through '89."

Harry Potter dropped his professional correctness and met John's handshake with a friendly smile. "Brilliant. Watson, your name's all over the trophy cabinet at school. Ron once made me stay up and study Charlie's playbook the night before a big match."

"Which I recall we lost because you fell asleep at the breakfast table with your face in a fry-up."

The two Aurors had a hard time keeping from laughing long enough to give Wright her parting instructions. John felt a wave of loneliness tugging at his feet just from listening to them.

John had of course heard plenty about Harry Potter from his old friends Bill and Charlie. He'd once asked them whether being brothers-in-law to the Boy Who Lived was a right pain in the arse. Bill laughed and denied it, but John had a keen feeling there was more to the story. He knew the Weasleys. While they were a loud and exuberant pack of gingers, they would have tired of the spotlight very quickly. That had been Fred's place.

* * *

_Buttresses crumbled under magical shock waves, blasting green and red in the stormy twilight. Giants roared. Dying children screamed._

_A gargoyle plummeted to the floor, shaken loose from the safe perch of centuries. Frozen lips were drawn back over its fangs in an open-throated laugh, carefree and blithe._

_The spell screamed in John's mind but he couldn't set it free. He was going to die. He fell hard to his knees, the jarring motion finally shaking the spell free from his throat._

"Deprimo!"_ Gargoyle dust poured down over their heads._

_"Watson!" A stone lintel broke from the doorway and teetered toward them. Bill Murray dragged him away just in time. _"Arresto momentum!"

_The massive stone hovered inches above John and Bill's heads. Together, they lowered it to the floor. Panting, the two Healers leaned back into the wall. John felt the bones of the castle throbbing with pain under the Death Eaters' assault._

_John wiped his face with the back of his hand. Beside him, Bill's bloodshot eyes shone out of a death mask of pulverized stone. "Jesus, that was close. You all right?" Bill nodded, panting._

_The corridor ended in gray sky. An entire wall was gone. Three redheads surrounded a fallen companion. John recognized them: George Weasley. Percy. Ron._

_"No! Fred! No!"_

* * *

John scrubbed at his eyes with the back of one hand. With the other, he gripped the bedrail to stay upright. How long had he been standing there?

Auror Wright settled in the rigid caned chair by Holmes's bedside. The casual efficiency with which the young Auror held her wand was betrayed by her restless eye movements. She looked as if she expected Holmes to jump up from unconsciousness and perform some crazy contortions to steal her wand, knock both of them out, and leap right out of the seventh-story window. John hid a smile.

Out in the corridor, a phalanx of Hit Wizards guarded either side of the door. Was his patient really that lethal? John turned his shoulders to squeeze through the gauntlet. "Sorry... Pardon me."

Christmas music tinkled softly along the corridor as John progressed along his regular rounds. He grimaced at the saccharine warbles coming from the wireless in the nurses' station. John liked Christmas music but Celestina Warbeck was taking it a little bit too far.

"What have we tonight, my friends?" John smiled.

Nurse Aurelia Hamilton handed him a thick sheaf of parchment, damp from her trembling hands. She never quite looked at the Hit Wizards down the corridor as she replied. "It's Saturday, Healer Watson. The usual."

_Upsetting my staff,_ thought John angrily, _that's another one Weasley owes me for this mess._ He answered with a teasing grin to put her at ease.

"Couple of domestics, couple of Splinches, couple of kids fooling around with Mum or Dad's wands and blowing off somebody's eyebrows?"

"That's about the size of it, Healer."

John's final patient was a five-year-old boy who came out second-best in a scrum with _The Monster Book of Monsters._ His pale and sweating mother hunched beside the bed.

"It's all right, Mrs. Chatworth. I've surely seen worse from this book, Charley my boy, I think you got off easy. Just a little nip, isn't it?" The boy snuffled and nodded, holding out his bandaged hand to John. "We'll stay out of Mummy's bookshelves in the future, won't we? Plenty of time to learn these things when you've got a wand and can stick up for yourself. Can you believe that's a school book?"

"A school book?" the little boy squealed. Mrs. Chatworth shook her head furiously.

"Yes, so you'll have to tackle it again eventually. When I was at Hogwarts, we read it in second-year Care of Magical Creatures." John ruffled the boy's blonde hair. "Rest up, mate. Mum, just ring the call bell if he needs anything."

John made his way back to Holmes's room. During his rounds, the patient's unusual features had never left his mind: high cheekbones, a prominent nose. The ghosts of frown lines lay dormant across his pale forehead.

A warning sounded in the rational part of John Watson's mind. He muffled it as impatiently as he clapped down on his alarm clock when the covers were too warm to leave.

John wanted to be there when Sherlock Holmes opened his eyes. He wanted to see whether they were blue or grey or something else entirely.


	2. How Dangerous Could He Be?

Half submerged, Sherlock held his breath and flailed for the surface. His face pressed against the border of awareness. He felt the cool air on his skin. Once again he slipped beneath, not strong enough to push through the thick elastic rind obscuring the surface like custard gone cold on the dinner table. His breath pistoned faster and faster, shallower and shallower.

Gloved hands touched the pulse points at his throat. Sherlock convulsed at the contact, wavering on the line between the deception of dreams and the clear evidence of his senses.

A kind tenor voice spoke nearby. "Mr. Holmes... Sherlock. It's all right. We've got you. You're in hospital."

Sherlock's lips cracked at both corners as he spoke. "Mycroft?"

"I can call him."

Sherlock fought to open his eyes. "No!"

"Nurse, I'll need the valerian."

The doctor's voice held such courtesy, such effortless authority. What a tantalizing paradox: kindness was weak. Footsteps moved away, and a door opened and closed.

Valerian, not Valium: Mycroft's people had him. Hopelessness swam up from his stomach and into the back of his throat with a sour tang like acid reflux. Damn it all to hell. The lab must have exploded. He was only trying to gather samples he couldn't grow or synthesize on his own.

Sherlock's right hand tingled brightly. The skin at his wrist caught against something unyielding, something cruel and pinching. Cold ridges encircled his forearm, pressing with precision into soft flesh.

"Mr. Holmes, please open your eyes."

"My name is Sherlock."

The tenor voice chuckled. Sherlock was insulted.

"All right then, Sherlock. I'm John Watson, Attending Healer in St. Mungo's. You've been here for-" Papers rustled- "Eight days. The Aurors who responded to your difficulties rushed you directly to Trauma Care. You were transferred to my ward yesterday."

Sherlock heard the unmistakable swish of a vellum scroll rolled and tied with a ribbon. He longed for the lab at St. Bart's, for microscopes and tablet computers and the nose-burning aroma of preservatives from the morgue down the hall. Even a dreadful cup of coffee from the mousy little hospital pathologist wouldn't go amiss.

"Sherlock, I need you to open your eyes." Watson waited a few beats. "I don't wish to force you, but I do possess that ability."

"Magic," grumbled Sherlock. "Boring."

The doctor laughed. "If it's so boring, don't make me use it."

Sherlock waited half a minute. When felt the doctor moving for his wand, he cracked his eyes minutely open. It was harder than it should have been; his eyelashes were glued together with dried secretions.

The wounds on his face pulled and throbbed. "For God's sake, get that ridiculous chopstick out of my face."

The room resolved into focus at last. Sherlock blinked in the soft lighting beside the bed. He lay in an old-fashioned but otherwise unremarkable hospital room, not too different from the patient floors of St. Bart's.

Beside the bed stood a man in a long green robe. (Mycroft almost never donned a robe in Sherlock's presence.) His brownish-blond hair was cut shorter than Sherlock's but grew shaggy along the top and sides. There was no excuse for a wizard not to trim his own hair once in a while; all he needed was a wand.

As his vision cleared further, Sherlock scrutinized the doctor's capable hands. He examined the blunt yet polished wooden instrument held lightly between his fingers. Ten inches, sturdy. Oak and unicorn hair: strength and purity of purpose.

"You were in my brother's war."

"A great many were."

Watson stepped forward and lifted his brow in a question. The resulting crinkles across his forehead made something in Sherlock's stomach fold in upon itself. "May I check your eyes?"

Sherlock nodded. Watson peered closer. "What color are they, anyway?"

Sherlock replied flippantly. "I have a condition we Muggles call heterochromia. It's quite harmless. You may not have heard of it."

The doctor frowned again. Sherlock took advantage of his irritation to look him over very carefully. John Watson's eyes were blue without question or subtext, dark indigo blue without needing a footnote to explain them.

_His face is attractive, symmetrical enough. He has a rather appealing frown. Broad shoulders for his height... Sturdy, reliable. Yes, I shall consider this man as a sexual partner. All the rest is sentiment._

* * *

John couldn't contain a chuckle at the patient's sniffy attitude. "If you're on my ward, Sherlock Holmes, you're no Muggle."

"Squib, Muggle, it's immaterial. Whichever derogatory term you choose to employ, the fact remains that unlike my elder brother, I have never exhibited any paranormal abilities. Most of your Healers don't dare touch genetics. It's too controversial."

Sherlock's expressive face twisted in contempt, pulling once more on the stitches along his hairline. He betrayed a momentary flicker of discomfort and then went on lecturing.

"Recent advances in gene sequencing would have been a valuable aid to your You-Know-Who." He pronounced the once-fearful appellation with a sneer. "Sixty years ago, Grindelwald would have killed for the same knowledge."

Sherlock twisted his cuffed wrist and slumped backward, crossing his bare legs at the ankles. "Honestly, John, your criminals have got to get better names before I could possibly take them seriously. Grindelwald: a cow-ridden Swiss tourist trap, nothing to fear there but cheese. And that other one, a silly anagram in French. "_Vol de mort..._ Death stolen away. How romantic."

John couldn't help snickering. This was surely the oddest conversation he'd ever had with a patient. "Wizards haven't got the monopoly on dumb nicknames for criminals. How 'bout The Boston Strangler? Jack the Ripper?"

Sherlock tipped his face to one side. Dark curls fell away from his forehead. "Those are simple names, devoid of ego, and most importantly, to the point." Slowly, he rotated the restrained wrist. "No wizard I've ever known possesses the ability to be so succinct. As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me..." Sherlock flicked his eyes with disdain.

At the sight, something hot blossomed in John's stomach and trickled downward into his groin. John wasn't gay, but God save him, he couldn't take his eyes off this bloke.

_You're a terrible Healer for wanting into a patient's pants... a male patient's pants at that. As if that's not enough, he's a suspect in a crime that's bad enough to have Hit Wizards lurking all over your ward, scaring the shit out of your staff._

Sherlock was still talking. "Genetically, I possess one-third of the alleles needed to manifest telepathic ability. For telekinesis, I've only got about a quarter.

"Judging by your profession in the Wizarding world, you should have at least ninety percent telepathic ability and fifty percent telekinesis." John heard the longing behind the clinical words. "And teleportation?"

"I can Apparate, yes."

"I'm tired. I want to rest." Sherlock draped his free elbow over his eyes. John couldn't help smiling at the gesture. If it weren't for the powder-blue hospital gown and the cuffed wrist, he could be lounging on the beach.

"We've got to get those wounds cleaned properly this time and bandage them up. You can have a kip while we get ready."

John reached down to brush his fingertips across Sherlock's forehead, near the line of stitches. He told himself he was only searching for the telltale heat of infection but his hand slowed just before he reached the skin. God, he was a terrible person. It was so wrong to want to touch a patient purely for his own pleasure.

Auror Wright snuffled and woke from dozing upright in the hard-backed chair. "Everything all right, Healer?"

"I'm going to need assistance cleaning some of these scratches, they're getting infected. I'll just pop out and round up some help."

This time, John passed the waiting Hit Wizards without a friendly greeting.

_Damn it, John, Sherlock is not just your patient. That would be bad enough by itself. He's a criminal in both worlds: his own and yours. For God's sake, there are Hit Wizards waiting outside the room, scaring the shit out of your staff. Magical Law Enforcement isn't fucking around with this one. His brother might be the most powerful bloke in the damn United Kingdom. Stop this before you get in over your head._

It was too late for the sensible Healer John Watson. He was already falling for Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
